Day 48 Billings to......home

July 14, 2014

4 miles
19.52 ST
11.4 avg


Huh? Four miles? Home? What.....?

And this is where it ended today...at the bike shop in Billings.

If you recall from last night, I mentioned that we had a broken spoke and needed to have it replaced this morning before leaving for Columbus.

We knew we wanted to go to the Spoke Shop because we had stopped there on our way through Billings on our first trip six years ago. When we got there, we took the wheel off and took it in and left it with Craig, explaining what was going on. We knew it would be an hour or so because they had other work ahead of us.

As we waited outside we prayed and talked about what could be the "catastrophic" thing that would send us home early. We didn't look at all our flats, or even spoke replacements, as being in that category. We had had similar conversations earlier in the trip.

Not even five minutes later, Craig called and said he had bad news. "Ok, we're outside and will come right in." I fully expected something along the lines of needing another new tire or more spokes replaced.

I have to say we were shocked to see what he showed us. The rim is separating from the wheel in several places and the wheel itself is warped.

 See that black line running through the middle of the silver? That's the rim separating from the wheel.

 

 What you can't see is the warp in the wheel. When we take the tire off again, I'll take another pic and post that.

This wheel is totally unfixable. What? We just bought these wheels before we left.

What to do? The Spoke Shop doesn't carry tandem wheels. And even if they did, they wouldn't fit our bike because Santana's hubs are wider than other tandem bike hubs. We could possibly call Santana to get another wheel shipped, but that would take three or four days. In addition to the cost of a new wheel, there would be more motel nights while we waited. And we were only 140 miles from home!

After talking about it some more, we agreed that this was the "catastrophic" thing. And so, our trip ended in a sudden and somewhat undramatic, anticlimactic fashion.

Gerry went in to tell Craig of our decision and to pay him for what he had done. He refused any payment. (They did the same thing six years ago.) We could tell that everyone in the shop felt badly about the situation. If you're ever in need of any bicycling help while in Billings, we recommend this shop.

We called my sister, Mary, and she and Tom dropped everything and willingly drove our van over to pick us up.

As we waited, it was an interesting time of processing mentally and emotionally what was happening. Gerry has done a better job of it today than me. I'm still working through it all.

 

 This isn't how we had planned to get Silver Streak and Bob home.

Mary said we could've finished on these. ;o)

Our first trip ended with a picture of us standing in the Atlantic Ocean. Well, this isn't exactly the Atlantic, but this is how this one ended.

 We are extremely grateful to all of you who have prayed for us, expressed your love and concern for us, and followed us all the way. We KNOW this is what God had planned, even though right now we don't know why.

This isn't the end of the blog. Please check back in a few days if you're interested in the "factoids" summary of the trip and further thoughts.

And now, we're going to bed in our own bed, and looking forward to working in our garden, and seeing our grandkids, family and friends!

In Christ,
Pat